The 2nd Cuenca Conference

Bridges for Health in Old Age

Dear colleagues, friends, and distinguished guests,

It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the 2nd Conference of the Cuenca Research Institute for Treatment Approaches to Age-Related Diseases at Tel Aviv University.

Our inaugural conference, "Building a Healthier Future for Older Adults," held in September 2025, was dedicated to the memory of Prof. Yoram Maaravi, whose vision helped shape the Institute’s mission: to approach aging through a gerontological framework that recognizes it as a multidimensional process inﬂuenced by medical, functional, emotional, social, familial, and economic factors.

Since then, the Cuenca Research Institute has continued to advance this vision through research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and partnerships across the healthcare system, public sector, and community, including the Ministry of Health and the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality.

This year's conference, "Bridges for Health in Old Age - Building Common Ground Across Professions and Stakeholders," reﬂects our commitment to fostering a shared language and developing practical tools across disciplines. A central focus of today's meeting, emerging from the working groups convened during our ﬁrst conference, is the need to develop a common toolkit for assessing function and needs in older adults. This represents a critical step toward more accurate, equitable, and coordinated care.

As in our ﬁrst conference, we are proud to support and recognize outstanding early-career researchers whose work contributes to advancing the ﬁeld of aging.

I invite you to take an active part in today’s discussions, to share your perspectives, and to help us continue building bridges between research, practice, and policy.

I wish us all a meaningful and productive conference.